An almighty thunderbolt is about to rip through the puppy-soft blandness of this summer's movies. And it takes the form of The Dark Knight, director Christopher Nolan's follow-up to 2005's Batman Begins. There's something raw and elemental at work in this artfully imagined universe. We have a movie with deeper dimension. Huh? What? How can a mentally scarred bloke in a bat suit and a villain with a cracked, painted-on clown smile speak to the essentials of the human condition? Watch this and you'll see. The Dark Knight creates a place where good and evil — expected to do battle — instead decide to get it on and dance:
"I don't want to kill you," Heath Ledger's psycho Joker tells Batman. "You complete me."
Don't buy the tease. He means it. Some of the darkness that made Heath Ledger kill himself surfaces in the Joker too. Real life inacted on screen.
It's not who you are underneath
but what you do that defines you
(Batman begins)
